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Tony Lewis

The work of Chicago-born artist Tony Lewis incorporates both found and original text, along with imagery reminiscent of, and at times pulled directly from, comic strips. Delving into questions of race, futurism and memory, Lewis’ sketched exercises and automatic writing present a loose yet painstaking visual language rendered in pencil, graphite powder and oil. Building upon the syntactical work of artists such as Glenn Ligon, Lawrence Weiner, and Jenny Holzer, Lewis’ use of text is two-fold—the meaning of each word is echoed by the shape, form and arrangement of shadowed letters.


Lewis has had solo exhibitions at Marino Marini Museum, Florence, Italy, Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, OH, Massimo de Carlo, Milan, Italy, Bindery Projects, St. Paul, MN, and Autumn Space Gallery, Chicago. Group exhibitions include Galerie Lelong, New York, Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago, Jessica  Silverman Gallery, San Francisco, Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York and the 2014 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others. 

Born 1986
Hometown Chicago, Illinois
Lives and Works Chicago, Illinois
Education
MFA, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, 2012
Post-Baccalaureate, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, 2010
BA, Washington and Jefferson College, Washington, PA, 2008

Tony Lewis Gallery Art

Galleries

Shane Campbell Gallery

SHOWS

Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania

Philadelphia
Sep 13 2017 - Dec 23 2017

Speech/Acts

Bortolami Gallery

New York
Nov 10 2016 - Dec 22 2016

Virginia Overton, Tony Lewis, Liz Larner, Michel François, and Morgan Fisher

Galerie Lelong

New York
Jun 30 2016 - Aug 05 2016

Chicago Invites Chicago

Massimo De Carlo

London
Jun 10 2016 - Jul 29 2016

SELF

The Studio Museum in Harlem

New York
Nov 12 2015 - Mar 06 2016

A Constellation
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